In late September of last year, BlackBerry (then operating under the name Research in Motion) tried to assure investors that its long awaited BlackBerry 10 devices were finally close to release, and would be a hit. Thorsten Heins, the company's CEO, noted in the second quarter earnings release that "carriers and developers are responding well to previews of our upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform."
"Make no mistake about it," Heins said at the time. "We understand that we have much more work to do, but we are making the organizational changes to drive improvements across the company, our employees are committed and motivated and BlackBerry 10 is on track to launch in the first calendar quarter of 2013."
Almost exactly a year later, the company revealed that it would take a nearly $1 billion charge due to unsold Z10 devices, lay off more than a third of its staff and had tentatively agreed to what would once have been considered a pitifully small acquisition offer from Fairfax Financial Holdings. Now, investors may choose to fight back.
See also: Is BlackBerry Done?
Marvin Pearlstein, a BlackBerry investor, filed a lawsuit on Friday against BlackBerry and two of its top execs — Heins and chief financial officer Brian Bidulka — for allegedly trying to mislead investors into thinking the company and its upcoming BlackBerry 10 products were in a better position than in reality. Pearlstein hopes to make it a class-action lawsuit representing thousands of BlackBerry shareholders.
“The company was not on the road to recovery and re-emerging as a lead player in the wireless communications industry,” the complaint alleges, according to Bloomberg. “In reality, the BlackBerry 10 was not well received by the market, and the company was forced to write down a nearly $1 billion charge related to unsold BlackBerry 10 devices and lay off approximately 4,500 employees, totaling approximately 40% of its total workforce.”
The lawsuit goes on to blame the above statements made by Heins and others for boosting the stock price, and subsequently leading to the stock's rapid decline in recent months.
BlackBerry did not immediately respond to Mashable's request for comment on the lawsuit.

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